Tower of Mothers, 1937/38

The personal traumatic experience of a mother who lost the younger of her two sons in 1914 as a victim of one of the first battles of the First World War, reverberates in the oeuvre of the empathetic artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945). Starting in 1922, in her visionary woodcut cycle War, she heralded the emergent dangers of yet another political collapse. In the closed form of the round sculpture Tower of Mothers of 1937/38, female figures stand together forming a protective wreath around their children with their bodies to ward off dangers looming from outside, but probably also prevent internal threats: Käthe Kollwitz’s son Hans had volunteered for frontline service. Significantly enough, the bronze sculpture, cast 1938 to Kollwitz’s designs, was removed by the Nazis from the Berlin show in the Atelierhaus on the grounds that in the Third Reich mothers did not need to protect their children because this was done for them by the state. As a trained graphic artist, Kollwitz was pained by self-doubt when it came to creating sculptures. Her long-standing friendship with the sculptor Ernst Barlach (1870-1938)—also an anti-fascist—provided her with guidance in finding artistic solutions.

MH, 2021